Re: End of the line for Elvas tower
Author: Mike Swanson
Date: 03-30-2007 - 09:37
Then tell me why, pray tell, was Santa Fe management so damn eager to dump said collection, rather than ensuring that it would go to an organization that could take proper care of it, hmmm? I'm not saying that CSRM's eyes weren't too big (I agree fully with you there); however, it's not fair at all to say that CSRM alone screwed the pooch here or is solely to blame for what happened to the ATSF collection. Santa Fe had no real reason or justification for suddenly wanting to get rid of a collection it had taken care of for several years or for razing the very structures that had housed that collection, other than making the property "pretty" for a merger (with SP) that would've failed anyway! Go and blame CSRM all you want, but ATSF could have easily held on to the collection and made sure that it would have gone to a museum or organization with the will and resources to give it proper treatment, rather than dump it ASAP (for that matter, the collection could've been broken up and parceled out, rather than donated as a complete collection; some railfans would've @#$%&, but it would've been better than having it all rust or be scrapped). In my not-at-all-humble opinion, that makes ATSF and its management (at the time) the real guilty party in that mess; CSRM was just an accessory to the real crime.